Company says new process should facilitate broader applications

ColdQuanta has achieved Bose-Einstein condensate in a commercial setting, the first time outside of a university or government research lab setting that it has been achieved, the company announced Monday.

Boulder-based ColdQuanta was formed in 2007 with the primary purpose of facilitating the commercial creation of Bose-Einstein condensate. On Monday, the company announced it had achieved that goal with equipment it developed to simplify the process.

ColdQuanta communications Manager Seema Hass said the RuBECi, the equipment that the company developed to produce Bose-Einstein condensate more easily, should lead to more commercial applications being developed.

"We're hoping that this will help jump-start applications using Bose-Enstein Condensate or ultra-cold matter," she said.

Bose-Einstein condensates are formed at a fraction above absolute zero. At those temperatures, atoms, in this case Rubidium, coalesce to form a super atom or a single quantum entity with properties much different from atoms at room temperature.

Bose-Einstein condensates were first demonstrated by Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell at the University of Colorado in 1995 -- an achievement for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize. Since then, there has been widespread interest in the condensates and related forms of cold matter, but most of the research has occurred in university and government research labs.

Advertisement

Dana Anderson, ColdQuanta's chief technology officer, is a physics professor at CU and a fellow at JILA, a joint institute of the university and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

"We are thrilled to be the first commercial business to be able to routinely produce BEC," said ColdQuanta CEO Rainer Kunz in a news release. "Although we are small, we anticipate we will continue to contribute directly to developments in novel applications in the atomic optics field."

Boulder is pretty good at producing rock bands, and by "rock," we mean the in-your-face, guitar-heavy, leather-clad variety — you know, the good kind. For a prime example, look no farther than BANDITS. Full Story